6 March 2021

In late November 2020 we gathered online during the International Symposium on Ecohydraulics, hosted by LOC from INRAE and EDF, Lyon, France. Despite the challenges and downsides of a virtual conference (as opposed to face-to-face), the gather was an absolute success! We thank the LOC for giving ECoENet the opportunity to showcase, organise and discuss our way forward during this event. As ECoENet, we organized and broadcasted three virtual sessions, for a total of more than 4 streaming hours!

We started in the morning with an oral presentation where we gave an overview of ECoENet activities and views on the Ecohydraulics research community, with emphasis on Interdisciplinarity, based on our recent publication ‘Interdisciplinary in Ecohydraulics: Outcomes from ISE2018’ (pdf here) . We then organized and chaired the session  “Expanding boundaries in Ecohydraulics: diverse environments for diverse challenges” to offer a glimpse of the richness and diversity of ecohydraulic challenges.

In our third (and last) session we hosted a 2-hours open virtual discussion table to collect feedback on past ECoENet network activities and to discuss the next steps to take. We collected dozens of comments and suggestions that have helped us to reflect and redirect our efforts, so… Thank you to all participants! Here below you can find the take-home messages that we gathered from our discussions during the meeting.

At the end of the virtual meeting, a new committee and board were formed. Roser Casas-Mulet, who had been Chair since 2016, stepped out of the role and will support the network as a mentor. Davide Vanzo took over the new Chair role whilst Ana Adeva-Bustos, previously secretary, is now the new co-Chair. Desmond Osofu, Emilio Politti and Lennart Hagen Schönfelder confirm their commitment as social media manager, webmaster, and newsletter editor. New members also joined the committee: Davide Vettori as new secretary, Baptiste Marteau, Laura Plichard and Daniel Hayes, as ECoENet regional groups coordinators and impact officers. 

The three virtual sessions were organized by the ECoENet board, with the support of the LOC young members, Baptiste Marteau, Laura Plichard and Juliette Becquet. 

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Pills from the ISE 2020

• Many attendees could participate in  the webinar mainly because it was online (and free). The COVID-19 emergency forced us all to change dramatically how we interact and “meet”: the bright side of this is that we learned fast new and more inclusive ways to interact and build communities. ECoENet is committed to geographic, social and scientific inclusion: we will keep working in this direction and make further use of online solutions to reach as many of you as possible. If you have ideas and suggestions concerning this aspect, let us know!
• For the great majority of you, ECoENet activities are valuable and… worth continuing. Well, thank you! We will do our best to keep on growing and support you as early careers and ecohydraulic researchers. However, please do not forget that a network exists and thrives only if all the members contribute to it! How to do it? Well, we have some suggestions 🙂 … jump to the last point if you are impatient!
• Many of you pointed out that we did not clarify well enough the core activities of the network committee… let’s try to fix this! The committee is responsible for the ordinary duties of the network: we have regular meetings, prepare newsletter, announcements and posts, maintain the webpage, organize events. Beyond the ordinary duties, we launch and support specific activities, named Strategic Actions: they are projects (e.g. wiki session), in charge of a responsibility, that we believe are beneficial for all the network. Why do we not have more Strategic Actions? …
• Well, we do our best but there are only a few of us! The good news is that you do not need to be part of the committee to lead a Strategic Action. Do you have an idea, an activity, that you would like to carry on but you need support or experience? Contact us, and if your idea fits the scope of ECoENet, we will be happy to support you in this Strategic Action. Remember… You are the network!
• We want to reach you all around the globe! To do that we want to build a group of regional representatives directly in contact with the network committee. You will hear from us soon… but if you would like to represent your country/area, contact us!
• How to contribute… post, tag us, send us some material, for example your newly published papers, calls, news, job ads… 
• Are you a master of WordPress, or you simply play with it? If so, we would need your help with the website!